Luna Blake read the third body's crime scene report and smiled. Someone in Wychhollow was killing rival witches and leaving a signature: a heart shaped bloom of red roses ringed in thorns, laid on the chest. Three covens fought for the town's fear, and Luna planned to run the deadliest one by autumn. She just had to figure out which one that was, before she wasted her best dress on amateurs. She sat cross-legged on her rented floor, blonde hair pinned up, black skirt riding high, spreading newspaper clippings around her knees. Three names circled in pink pen. The Ashfen. The Hollowbriar. The Verrin. Each claimed the killings. Only one was telling the truth. Picking wrong meant weeks flirting with nobodies while the real queens laughed. She needed to see a fresh scene before the constables cleared it. The fourth body turned up at dawn, in the mushroom grove past the mill, where the caps grew taller than a person and glowed in bruised colors. Luna slipped past the rope in a black masquerade mask and a rose-stitched corset over her short skirt, the outfit she kept for exactly this kind of errand. She looked like any devoted acolyte come to mourn. A thin woman in Ashfen grey was already crouched by the corpse, arranging a thorned rose heart on the dead witch's ribs. Placing it. Not finding it. Luna's smile widened behind the mask. So the Ashfen were the copycats. "Beautiful work," Luna said brightly. The woman flinched and stood. "You shouldn't be here." "Neither should the heart," Luna said. "The killer left the last one under the ribs, not on them. Page four of the Herald. You skimmed." The woman's hand went to her belt. Something behind Luna made a wet, clicking sound. Luna turned. A dead otter picked its way out from between the glowing stems, fur rotted through in patches, one eye burning cold blue. It stopped at her heel and looked up like it knew her. Not the Ashfen woman's. A familiar sent to watch. "That's not mine," the woman whispered. "I know," Luna said. The otter chirped once and turned back into the grove. Luna followed three steps and looked over her shoulder. "Tell your coven the real killers are watching you take credit. I'd run." She let the Ashfen woman bolt. Then she knelt where the otter had stood. A single rose petal lay in the moss, fresh, edges wet. Not from the staged heart. From whoever had sent the familiar. Hollowbriar or Verrin. Two names, not three. Luna tucked the petal into her top and stood, brushing moss off her skirt. The otter was waiting at the treeline. It wanted her to follow. Luna adjusted her mask and went after it, humming.